Good evening! I’ve been thinking of you whilst cooking, wondering what kind of “non-coincidence” it was that made me suddenly decide to look on Mumsnet today.
You see, you can’t imagine just how much I know what you are talking about. It is almost as if I had travelled back in time and were re-visiting my own 23-year-old self, as there are many similarities in our stories, and I have cried whilst remembering the young woman I was and wishing to help you in the way I would have needed to be helped back then, but I felt such shame then, such a failure, that I hid the abuse and did not dare speak with anyone.
I know about the lonely nights thinking of the abuser, whose monstrous behaviour, lack of compassion and humanity seem to dissolve away in the dark of night as you suddenly only remember the "loving" moments and feel your heart wrenching with the pain of longing.
I know the deep despondency when the precious gift of life and youth becomes like faded, joyless drudgery, dragging out into countless empty hours.
And the hope beyond hope that there might still be some way to reach across the abyss and to be able to communicate again with that loving, caring man you once knew, who brought you so much happiness. So you desperately cling on to the hope of somehow connecting with him again.
Well, what experience has taught me is that all this pain stems from a single source: your lack of self-love.
But I heard exactly that again and again over the years (I repeated the abusive relationships several times over many years) so I am now wondering how to help you hear the real truth of those words when I was not able to recognise it myself for so long?
My story is that I have lived a life of continuous sorrow until my suffering became so unbearable and I finally began to look within. I don’t mean with the head, I mean with heartfelt compassion and understanding for my Self.
And I realised that those “little” things like wanting to please others, wanting to be loved, wanting to be special in someone’s eyes, are the big things, because they are not based upon healthy feelings, they are based upon not feeling worthy, not even worthy enough to base my life about being me!
Of course we are entitled to want to be loved, and to not be lonely in life. But I have discovered that with the right therapist, you can open up to another dimension of understanding about yourself, a deeper awareness, and the realisation that you really do look to others for your sense of self, for approval, for value.
This can only ever lead to pain and sadness, and unfortunately the tendency to become the victim of narcissists.
I have gone through exactly that tortuous desperate longing for the nice version of both my 1st and 2nd husband for countless years, yet with the right therapy the fog has lifted and I can see things clearly: there never was a nice version of my husband, that was an act. Nice people just do not do such things, not ever.
It is not that we are not intelligent enough to see, it is that we do not want to see it, because a part of us believes we NEED to be loved to survive.
I have discovered that as soon as you begin healing your Inner Child, you stop feeling lonely, you stop feeling sad and empty at the way the narcissist treated you. You just see them as a damaged person who you need to avoid out of self-love, the way you guide your child to avoid an alcoholic on the street, whilst having human compassion for them.
And self-love stops seeming like selfishness and self-centredness, and starts feeling like a wonderful, warm, buoyant and happy feeling within, no matter the external circumstances.
As a mother, this will also be the greatest gift that you can give to your child, as children learn by our example.
Regarding your anxiety about being a young divorced mother in your community, please don’t worry. Members of your community are already supporting your divorce, so they are caring deeply for your well being above social ideals (and all communities have the same ones at the end of the day).
I remember feeling as if my world had ended when I became a young divorcee, as if I would never love again, but you will be happy again. Just please remember my example and heal your lack of self-love first. You are so worth it!
Then one day, just as some amazing coincidence lead me to check into Mumsnet today, so there will be the right person for you in the future. Someone who loves you for YOU. But for him to be able to do that, you need to deeply discover who you really are, who you want to be, who you want your child to see and learn from.